


Artistic Honesty (#209 Write)

by ladygray99



Series: A Silk Pillow [207]
Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Backstory, Community: numb3rs100, Drabble, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-15
Updated: 2011-06-15
Packaged: 2017-10-20 10:59:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladygray99/pseuds/ladygray99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's nothing quite like that old university admissions essay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Artistic Honesty (#209 Write)

**Author's Note:**

> University admissions essays. Raise your hand if you wrote one. Raise your hand if it sucked. I know mine did.

  
“Well?” Ian asked. Charlie cringed. “That bad?”

“It’s an art school application not a SitRep.” Ian sighed. “Just tell them why you’re interested in the program.”

“I’m semiretired, hate golf, and they don’t let you shoot people freelance.”

“Maybe some background on yourself before that bit.”

Ian picked up his pencil and considered how honest he should be.

 _When I was fifteen my family died. I then spent three years in foster hell before the Army took me off the streets._

 _They taught me how to kill under orders and I did that for nearly thirty years._

 _I’m not sure what I was supposed to be before I lost my family. I can’t really remember what I wanted to be at the time. I’m sure soldier wasn’t on the list. I do remember the nuns doing damage to my knuckles for doodling instead of taking notes. I did several hundred push-ups in basic for the same reason. My last set of superiors were too scared of me to mention the doodles on the back of my reports but I know they disapproved. Sometime past my 40th birthday I was gifted with my first love token. It was a sketch pad and art pencils._

 _I don’t think I was meant to be a killer for the alphabet soup that keeps this country safe, I don’t think anyone is. I don’t know if I was meant to be an artist either. Limitless potential exists in the average fifteen year old boy. In the years after I lay for an hour under my brother’s body I had most of my potential stripped away, but even as my hands learned to accurately deal out death they continued to create small works of art in any blank margin or scrap of paper they could find._


End file.
